An Open Letter to the People of Greece

In six days, you will decide your country’s fate by referendum. Vote “Yes,” and you accept the bailout offer from the IMF – the one with massive tax hikes to appease Brussels and Berlin (among others), and unlock more “aid”. Vote “No,” and you essentially call their bluff, and likely have to return to your own currency. I’m asking you to vote “no.”

You have been told, repeatedly, that the events of the last five years have been an inevitable consequence of economic reality and the rules of the European Union. Whoever says that is either mistaken or dishonest, depending upon where they were when Germany underwent its own restructuring in the early aughts – and the money supply was loosened for the Germans, while you and your fellow Mediterranean nations experienced the easy-money asset bubbles as maddening as they were inevitable.

You are now being told by your former Prime Minister – Antonio Samaras – that “Yes” is the only legitimate option. Don’t forget this comes from a man who repeatedly refused to say “Yes” to earlier offers in his previous stint as opposition leader. Only when he had ministers in the government (after the 2011 shenanigans where Brussels demanded a “unity government”) did he change his tune. Even now, he is asking not just for a “Yes” vote, but another “unity” regime. He is essentially asking you to reverse the defeat he received – and richly deserved – at your hands about five months ago.

You are now being warned of horrendous consequences of a “No” vote, most of which (especially “capital controls” – a fancy way of saying your formerly liquid deposits are now as solid as the earth’s mantle) you are already experiencing anyway, and none of which were spared on Cyprus when it said “yes.”

I know that is not an easy decision to make. Economically, both choices are painful ones, and yes, that comes in part from years of budgetary neglect, but only in part. The role of the ECB in going soft for the German economy but not for your own cannot be forgotten. Nor can the consequences of essentially handing over control over your spending and tax decisions to the unelected bureaucrats of the IMF and EU. Vote “no,” and you have your economic sovereignty back, and whatever decisions you make (and even I’ll admit it’s unlikely I’ll approve of most of them, given the nature of your SYRIZA-dominated government), they will be wholly yours again.

I also can’t help but notice that the loudest voices for a “yes” vote are the very same political parties that allowed the aforementioned budget neglect. Neither SYRIZA nor their junior right-wing partner ANEL have any fingerprints on the decades of domestic mistakes.

Still, this isn’t an easy call. Emotionally, you are essentially being asked if the decision to join the eurozone was the correct one. I can tell you it wasn’t, but I know that to many of you, “the euro” means “Western Civilization.”

Except it doesn’t. Voting “No” doesn’t shift your geography. You will still be where you always were: in the eastern Mediterranean. Voting “No” doesn’t kick you out of NATO. We haven’t heard much about NATO over the last few years, and that’s a mistake. Like all European members, you have made a promise to keep a defense budget of at least 2% of GDP. Unlike nearly all of your European allies, you have kept that commitment. In a world where facts were more important than the elite vision of Postchristendom, that would count for something. To many of us, it still does.

The West will neither forget nor abandon you if you vote “no.” On the contrary, many of us will be grateful for the blow struck for economic sovereignty and against the transnational nonsense that the EU has become.

This brings us to the heart of the matter. Your fellow European nations’ leaders are trying to teach a lesson – but not the one you think. It’s not about sober spending or an effective tax structure. It’s about showing their various electorates that “ever closer union” is inevitable; that national sovereignty is old news on the continent; that when the people speak, they can be ignored until their tongues tire and their silence can be taken for meek acquiescence.

Don’t fall for it. Be the raucous and democratic cure for noblesse oblige that your capital Athens was two-and-a-half millennia ago. Show the rest of Europe the way to sovereignty, democracy, and independence again.

Please, vote “no” on Sunday.

@deejaymcguire | facebook.com/people/Dj-McGuire | DJ’s posts

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